Colin McPhee
- New Music Concerts, Array Ensemble, Robert Aitken, Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan, David Mott, Michael J. Baker, Dianne Aitken, Marc Widner
Biography
Only the scantest trace remains of the compositions of important Canadian-born American composer Colin McPhee (1901-1964); as he discarded his First Piano Concerto (1924), only the second, his Concerto for Piano with Eight Winds (1928) survives. Married to anthropologist Jane Belo, McPhee moved with her to Bali to live from 1931 to 1936; his most famous work, the orchestral Tabuh-Tabuhan (1936) was the result along with many transcriptions of Balinese music, some of which he later recorded with Benjamin Britten. Alcoholism clouded much of McPhee's later life, but he recovered at the end of it, producing his Symphony No. 2 (1957).